Listening to the Apocalypse
by VampCinder
Summary: Moving on wasn't the hard part, it was figuring out what to do about all the spilled blood in the world. Shikasara Nara figured that all she could do for now was to stop and listen to the apocalypse. [Currently on temporary hiatus for rewrite]
1. Prologue

My story is rather different from most. In fact, in a way it starts from the end. In other words, I died.

I died, but unlike what I had believed for most of my life, I wasn't gone. Instead, I was back again, in a flesh and blood body.

Of course, it wasn't that clear cut. I wasn't me anymore, instead I was in a new body, a _very_ new body.

Although it wasn't just me that was different, everyone else was too. My parents were different, my surroundings were different, and pretty much everything else that you can think of was different as well.

Although, at the moment I couldn't be completely sure of course, since my vision was weird as all hell. From what I could tell, this was due to my new body. My newborn, underdeveloped body.

To sum it all up, it was terrifying. I couldn't see properly.

I was stuck in an unfamiliar setting, with presumably unfamiliar people, and I couldn't see. I had no idea what was around me

So what did I do to respond to this new situation? Why, I cried of course.

I don't know if that was because of my situation or my new body and all of the natural instincts that came along with it, but I still cried nonetheless.

At the time I couldn't be sure, but I was now Shikasara Nara. That was the name that was said over and over again at the time, said by the person holding me and softly laughing. My mother.

But it was strange, because it wasn't the mother that I knew.

As it turned out, I was reborn. Reborn into Shikasara Nara, daughter of Yoshino and Shikaku Nara, and most surprising of all, younger twin sister to Shikamaru Nara.

Shikamaru Nara, a name that stuck out in my mind even in that crazy time of distress. It was strange though, because Shikamaru Nara didn't exist.

Shikamaru Nara was simply a character, a character in a manga series. A character in Naruto. So apparently, I was in the same world as Shikamaru Nara, in the same world as Naruto Uzumaki.

In the Naruto world.

If that surprises you, imagine how I felt. In hindsight, at least I was reborn into a world I knew well. Really well actually, but my weird nerd obsession is beside the point.

Anyway, back to the terror and horror from before. I was scared, there was no other way to describe it. I was in a new place, and no matter how familiar it may have been in theory, it didn't end up helping me calm down.

At the time, I was feeling a whole rollercoaster of emotions. Fear, surprise, annoyance, sadness, and of course, awe. Although that last one wasn't exactly at the forefront of my mind.

Why was I so scared? Because I was being carried around, lifted up off the ground, and inspected. These weren't exactly things that happened unless you met some sort of overly affectionate and curious giant.

And since that wasn't a very likely situation, I was terrified. It's extremely difficult to convey exactly how utterly terrifying that moment was. I was helpless, I didn't know what was going on, my memory was fuzzy, and I was damn near blind.

Oh, and did I mention that I didn't _exactly_ have proper control over my limbs? They just kind of flailed around, which was rather appropriate for my current mood and state of mind.

There was also a feeling inside of me. Not an emotion kind of feeling, but an actual physical feeling, something lightly flowing through my body without my controlling it. Quite a while later, I would find that this feeling was my chakra. If you don't know what that is, think of it as magic problem solving juice that flows through a new set of veins.

Again, in hindsight this shouldn't have been so surprising. I was in the world of Naruto after all. The thing is, I had spent years of _not having_ that feeling. I later found that people couldn't do that as newborn children no matter how hard they tried. It was kind of like someone without a pulse all of a sudden having one and being able to feel every single beat of their heart.

It wasn't like it was very specific, but I could certainly feel it constantly in the background.

Days later, I finally managed to calm down. Well, by calm down I mean that I cried _less_ than I had for the past few days.

There was another problem. I didn't understand what anyone was saying. Sure, I understood that they were speaking Japanese. I had watched enough anime in my previous life to recognize the language, and even some key words and phrases. Say what you want, but apparently anime helps in life. Or…Death? I'm not sure really.

Technically, I had an advantage over all of the other kiddos in the world since I actually knew some words, - not that I could actually say them - but what you have to understand is that I spent years and years of being able to understand _everything_ that was said to me or around me.

The strange thing was, my mind was years ahead of my body. It wasn't perfect of course, since my actual brain wasn't fully developed, but I still managed to retain most of my memories and mental ability.

If anything, it just took me much longer to properly think things out logically. It was also much more tiring than I remembered, which resulted in me taking a lot more naps than the average child, which was a lot. Although that could have been due to my Nara genes, since Shikamaru slept the same amount.

The problem with a young adult being trapped in the body of a newborn baby was that I was fully conscious and understanding of my surroundings. Meaning that I was very, very bored just sitting around all day.

Unfortunately, that meant that I became extremely moody within a few days. In other words, I became a very large problem for Shikaku and Yoshino. It felt weird to call them mom and dad, since up until a few days ago, they didn't exist as far as I was concerned. Don't get me wrong, they took care of me and acted like how parents should, it was just strange to refer to them, to characters, with such intimate titles.

That was also something that I thought about on a daily basis as well. What happened? I doubted that everyone was just reborn somewhere with all of their memories after they died, so why was I? I was nothing special in my previous life. Hell, I would say I was maybe even a little less than average at certain areas of life, math included.

I came up with quite a few theories in the days gone by, but of course I couldn't be sure. I thought about everything from each person who dies getting their own universe to play around in, to me just happening to be the one entity to slip through the cracks.

I decided that if the latter was true, and it didn't happen again the next time I died, I would go ahead and rub it in the faces of every god/deity that I saw. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right? A bit of eternal damnation never hurt anyone.

Regardless of my situation, I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter all that much. No matter what actually happened, I did actually die in my universe. I wasn't randomly snatched up, I didn't just disappear, I actually died and nothing could change that. There would be no going back to my world, and chances were that I would simply have to live with what I now had.

That didn't mean that I didn't miss some things, I certainly did. However I wasn't particularly attached to other people in my world. My parents had gotten a divorce early in my life, and I only ever lived with my mom. My mom died from heart cancer a couple of years ago, and I had long since moved on. I had no siblings, and I didn't have extremely close bonds with friends.

Sure, I had friends like any other person, but there were a multitude of things that always stopped me from getting close. I had moved states between middle and high school, so I didn't have any longtime friends. After my mom died, I never really got all that close to people.

When I left high school and went to college, I moved states again and left anyone I knew behind. I talked to some friends online occasionally, but that became less and less common as time went on. Not long after, I dropped out of college, got a fulltime job, got an apartment, and kept to myself.

Then I went and got myself killed by…..well actually I couldn't remember how I died. I didn't know if that was because I never actually saw what killed me or if there was something else going on. The point was, I didn't care much. Of course I missed modern society, but I mostly just missed technology and the internet.

Although it wasn't too bad. For a seemingly Edo era ninja world, the level of sophistication and technology present in the world was fairly extensive, and I hadn't even seen that much yet. I knew that by the Boruto era, things like laptops existed, so it couldn't be too far off. Ugh, Boruto era.

And hey, I had always wanted to experience Japanese culture a bit more. Well no, actually I just wanted to see parts like anime, a very small amount of their food, and cat girls. I was one of the few people that recognized that Japan was a truly a weird place that I probably never wanted to go to. Not to mention I never had that kind of money, even if I wanted to.

In a way, Konoha was a dream for me. Sure, I knew that it was a bloody and dark place just like the rest of the elemental nations, but I was trying to be optimistic. Sue me.

Speaking of Japanese culture, I was initially surprised when I actually heard people around me speaking Japanese. I assumed that Japanese was simply used in the Naruto series because it was the language which Kishimoto spoke. Well, not Japanese per se, but the common language of the world that apparently just happened to be the same as Japanese.

Ignoring the mundane things like that, I'll move onto what most people are probably interested in.

When I was about three weeks old, on October 10th, something that I only partially expected happened, the Nine-tails attacked Konoha. The reason that I only partially expected it was because there was still a part of me that doubted that this world could possibly be the exact same one that I practically studied for years and years. Some part of me thought that it might just be similar, and certain huge events were different.

Alas, it wasn't to be. I knew it was wishful thinking, but I was still hoping in the back of my mind that things were different, because if they weren't, a lot of people were going to die.

The chakra that permeated the air that night was…..foul. I didn't even have to know that it belonged to the nine-tailed fox to realize that it was evil incarnate. I desperately didn't want to call it evil, because I knew that the nine-tails, Kurama, was not evil, just….angry. Angry at the world for being so cruel.

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't come up with a more apt description for the pure energy that it gave off. It was truly terrifying, it was demonic, and it made me want nothing more than to run away or curl into a ball.

Shikamaru laid next to me, crying and flailing. However all that I could do was freeze. I barely breathed, and I didn't make a sound. Not out of calm, but due to my immense fear. Because I was the one person who knew what was going on.

That was the worst part about this whole thing, I knew. I was the one, single goddamn person in all of Konoha that knew the truth. I knew who was doing all of this, I knew exactly what caused it, and I knew what would happen. I knew that Naruto Uzumaki had just been born, the sole child of the fourth Hokage and Kushina Uzumaki, two of the happiest people on earth.

And I knew that they were going to die, tonight, in Konoha. They were going to die painfully, with a giant claw through their chests and smiles on their faces. They were going to smile as they looked upon the only hope that the world had, their own son.

They were going to seal the source of this evil chakra in that son, that light in their lives, and they were doing it for the good of others. Minato Namikaze wasn't going to seal the nine-tails in Naruto out of spite or because it was all that was left, but because he truly believed in Naruto. They believed in Naruto, no matter what. They knew somehow that he would go on one day to change the world, and they were willing to give their lives for it.

It broke my heart. I hated that feeling. That's what it's like to be helpless, to know exactly what is coming but being forced to watch it happen anyway. It wasn't like I could feel their chakra signatures or whatever, but I would swear that I could feel it when those two people disappeared from the earth, those two lights for so many people.

And it broke me.

Something inside of me snapped, and all I could feel was anger. It had never been real before, but now it was. This was Obito Uchiha, this was Madara Uchiha. All of this happened because they wanted their so called "perfect world" to live in. They sacrificed so many people, ruined so many lives and erased so many existences for their own gain.

And even after all of this, they would laugh and say that they did it for the sake of a better world, never caring, never understanding, never looking down at the world they walked over to see all the people they stomped out, all the lights that they extinguished from the world.

It made me so angry, so furious. I wanted to do exactly to them what they did to others. I wanted to take away everything that they had and make them feel pain before I saw the light disappear from their eyes.

I promised, no matter how long it took, no matter how hard it would be, I would get strong enough. Hell, it didn't even have to be me, but I would do _something_ to change the world. If that meant helping other people win against them, so be it.

I vowed to kill Obito Uchiha.

But for now, I cried silently as anger warped my face.

For now, I listened to the apocalypse.


	2. Academy Arc: Chapter 1

AN: The "sara" in Shikasara is **NOT** pronounced like "Sarah". Try to keep that in mind. I ended up splitting what was going to be the second chapter into two separate chapters. I'm trying out shorter chapters to see how they are received compared to my usual 10k minimum.

The next several years were strange to say the least. I was now six years old. The first four were more or less normal, since you can't exactly expect such young children to start seriously studying to be ninja just yet.

Sure, we learned a few things here and there since we _were_ a part of a major ninja clan in Konoha, but it wasn't extensive by any means. It mostly consisted of simple things like basic knowledge of how to handle a weapon, some light exercise, and extremely basic chakra theory. Of course, we didn't use real weapons or actually work with chakra.

Naturally, Shikamaru and I became rather close. It eventually became a lot more natural to call him my brother, much like I fell into the habit of calling Shikaku and Yoshino mom and dad respectively.

Over the years, I had started to develop an appearance that differed quite a bit from Shikamaru and dad. First off, I had pink eyes. Not some insane neon pink or something like that, but more of a light purple shade.

Next, I took after my mom in terms of hair, so I had brown hair rather than the usual black that you would see in members of the Nara clan. I didn't really have any particular style, but I generally liked to keep it at around shoulder length, usually with my bangs swept across my forehead to the left, covering most of it but still staying above my eyes.

Everything else just fell straight down on the sides or back. Nothing too complicated, but it worked with my usual style.

Other than that, I didn't exactly have any striking traits to speak of. Hey, I was only six so I get a pass. What really set me apart from my peers was my fashion sense. Of course I didn't exactly have _complete_ control over what I wore due to certain clan outfits and ya know, being a child.

My outfits differed from other kids my age since I did actually have almost twenty years on them in terms of actually being alive, and I therefore had already developed certain aspects in my tastes.

That's not to say that I really cared all that much about my outward appearance, I hadn't in my past life. But I had developed a strange interest in wearing things that had some form of efficiency and comfort rather than pure aesthetic.

I had actually spent weeks planning out my outfit that I would wear one day, which was stored somewhere in a stack of my many notes and plans.

However for now, I usually donned some dull color of sweatpants, a simple black or dark green t-shirt, and sometimes a dark green hoodie if the temperature allowed it. I also tended to pick out things with as many pockets as my mother would allow.

Anyway, back to age and training. So for the next two years leading up to being six, Dad trained us in basic forms and sparring, actual basic use of chakra, and even started teaching the theory of our clan jutsu and their uses.

He didn't actually teach us the clan jutsu of course, but we learned things like exactly how the controlled shadows worked, how the jutsu affected our bodies and minds, and the dangers of using them.

For the most part though, our time was spent learning language and math, basic clan politics and other boring stuff like that, and playing like normal kids. Naturally those language and math classes were a tad bit harder than what normal kids were taught at that age, but since we were both expected to be ninja for the rest of our lives, it wasn't out of the norm.

I also did almost perfectly in them since I had already taken several years of AP calculus classes throughout my life. That isn't to say that I could still do complicated math like that, but I was easily able to complete anything that we were doing.

In fact, I occasionally tried to ask dad for even more things regarding more ninja related topics like chakra and jutsu theory. I had been doing my best to try and come up with ideas for jutsu, tactics, plans, and the like for years with my fragmented and highly incomplete knowledge of chakra and its applications.

Of course, even though they never actually taught us any jutsu and they told us not to try and use our chakra without supervision - which they refused to give outside of very specific training - I had already messed around with actually gathering and forming my chakra on a basic level, and I knew that even Shikamaru had as well.

Shikamaru was...less motivated. He had begun to take after dad fairly early on, and the only reason that I didn't was because I already had a developed personality, I had a goal in mind, and mom would never let her only daughter - and I quote - "Become a lazy, slothful bum who won't aspire to be anything in life other than average."

That wasn't to say that Shikamaru didn't try, he just didn't try very hard. He knew everything he needed to know, and probably even more. It was just that he knew exactly how much effort he needed to put in to prevent people from nagging him. In other words, he tried very hard to be average in academics.

Luckily for him, the people teaching us were either dad, people who had worked with dad a lot, or were the ones that taught dad, so they were used to it and figured that there wasn't much that they could do about it.

As for the playing part of our days, we were introduced to other main clan kids pretty early on. Obviously we mainly hung around Ino and Choji, who we had been playing with since we were babies, but we were naturally around other clan heirs and such a lot such as Kiba, Shino, and...Hinata.

Yeah, I never liked Hinata back in my world, bite me. In fact, she was always my least favorite character. Of course I didn't completely hate her with a passion now like I did back in the day, but now she was an actual character too. I no longer looked at her from a writing standpoint, but I still didn't like her much as a person.

I tried my best not to let my pre-formed hatred of her show when we were around each other. To be honest, she wasn't as bad as she was later on in the story quite yet since she hadn't met Naruto and become obsessed. But hey, that's in hindsight and not what I was thinking then.

Most of the time, I tried my best to either stay away from her entirely or just block out her speaking when I _was_ forced to be around her.

She may have become a little less shy from my presence over time, but that was probably wishful thinking. Unfortunately helping her out in becoming less shy and all that wasn't exactly one of the things on my list. Things like taking out the insane killing machine with plans to sacrifice the world came first.

As for Sasuke, I only ever really saw him from afar a couple of times in passing. Oh so surprisingly, his father didn't approve of things like mingling with kids his age.

The point is, here I was. Six years old now.

"Come on Shikamaru, you've gotta wake up so that we can get to the academy on time! Mom is ready to go!" I yelled as I shook my brother back and forth, trying to get him out of his bed. "Come on, I know you can hear me!"

His hand came up to lazily swat me away. "Stop being so troublesome Sara, it's just the first day. Besides, isn't dad still asleep too?"

He sorta had me there. Mom was in another room trying to wake up dad too. "That's no excuse! Dad doesn't have to be at school in twenty minutes!"

He tried to push me away as best as he could in his half asleep state. "Okay, okay, fine. Just go and I'll be ready in five minutes you troublesome sister."

I huffed powerfully and walked out of his room, closing the door behind me. I leaned against the wall and waited, fully prepared to march back in if I didn't hear movement.

Mom walked out with dad trailing behind her tiredly, deer skin coat and all. She sighed and placed her hands on her hips. "Well at least you managed to get him moving, that's the best I can hope for. I swear, if you had the same attitude as these two I would never get you three anywhere."

That was true. Even with just the two of them it was pretty hard to get them moving. I wasn't anything even remotely close to a morning person, but I could still actually get up at a reasonable time.

A few minutes later, Shikamaru emerged from his room, yawning as he skulked over to us. "I don't see why we need to get up so early just for school. So troublesome."

Dad yawned in unison. "Agreed. I'll make an official request to lord third to see if we could move that time up to about noon."

Mom lightly bopped him on the head. "You'll do no such thing. Now come on, we need to leave now if we want to get there with a few minutes to spare." She said as she lightly dragged them out of the door and made them start walking.

Walking as fast as we were able to get dad and Shikamaru to, we managed to get to the academy classroom that we were assigned to with just a couple of minutes to spare.

Mom leaned over, reaching her hands out to try to fix my hair and Shikamaru's outfit. "Are you OK? Are you nervous? It's OK to be nervous, everyone feels that way at first. I'm sure you'll both fit in just fine."

I put my hands up in defense and tried to block her. "I'm fine mom. Besides, you know that neither of us actually fit in with everyone else, it's fine. Shikamaru doesn't care and I'm just not nervous."

Apparently that wasn't enough for her. "Oh but honey, you've never been in a real classroom before. It'll be so different and there are bullies-"

I rose my hand and stopped her. "Mom, it's fine. I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually. We need to get into class."

Ordinarily mom was a fairly trusting person, and she knew that we could handle ourselves. But when it came to things like this, she started to worry way too much.

She sighed and gave a worrying look, but rose up and opened the door, letting us walk in. Iruka was standing at the front of the class, telling students where to sit. Most of the seats were already filled up by people that actually showed up at the recommended time.

Iruka turned to us and bowed towards dad. "Lord Nara."

Dad nodded slowly back. "Umino-san. I assume that you know who these two are?"

The young teacher rose and looked at us, nodding. "Yes of course, these two must be Shikamaru and Shikasara, correct?" He said with a smile.

He lowered down to our eye level. "Nice to meet you, I'm Iruka Umino. You can call me Iruka-sensei."

Shikamaru lazily raised his hand up. "Hey. Shikamaru."

I just nodded and grinned. "Likewise. I'm Shikasara, the younger twin sister of this lazy bum." I said, pointing back at a yawning Shikamaru. I wasn't the most formal person, but I could at least introduce myself well enough.

Iruka nodded and stood back up, looking at his clipboard he had in his hand. "I see. Well you two can go ahead and sit in those two empty seats right up at the front." He stated, pointing at a desk at the bottom of the stairs, closest to the front.

The classroom was set up just like every other classroom in the academy. There was a single podium up at the front of the room with a chalkboard behind it. The desks all had three seats and were on a riser sort of system, with each row of desks back getting higher up.

Before I could go to our desk, dad put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to whisper to me. "Just...hang in there kiddo. I'm sure it'll get harder eventually...probably. Oh, and look after your brother."

I nodded, not really understanding what he meant. _What did he mean by "it'll get harder eventually."? Why didn't he say it to Shikamaru too?_ I thought as I watched him stand back up and turn to Iruka-sensei.

Shikamaru and I walked over to the desk and sat next to each other, leaving the far right seat empty.

Iruka-sensei talked with mom for a minute before she and dad left to allow Iruka-sensei to start class.

Looking around the room, everyone that I would have expected to be there were seated around the room, along with other people that I didn't recognize. Naruto was also seated in about the middle of the room, trying to chat it up with some Civilian kid that was, surprise, trying his best to ignore him.

I had no doubt that I would start talking to him eventually and bring him into our circle of friends but...not right away. I knew that there was a cause and effect to everything. I knew that as a result of being desperate for attention and loud, Iruka-sensei would eventually start to sympathize with him, which would bring them closer and make Naruto into the person I knew him to end up being.

Not only did I not want to throw away that relationship that they had, but I also knew that if they never bonded like that and Naruto instead found friendship early on, he would turn out drastically different. And although that doesn't sound like a big deal, it also meant that it would probably lower my ability to predict the future.

I already knew that my mere presence would end up changing quite a few things, but I figured that I would try to keep things as similar as possible in terms of events. And I certainly wasn't about to try and mold Naruto into some overpowered god early on. The track record showed that doing that usually didn't turn out all that great.

Also...I wasn't even a genin yet. If Naruto started to stand out for his ability and raw talent rather than just being him so early on, there wouldn't be anything that I could do to do prevent someone like Danzo getting to him early too.

I was cut out of my thoughts when Iruka-sensei clapped to get our attention. "OK everyone, welcome to your first year in the academy. As I told each of you, you can just call me Iruka-sensei. I presume that you've all properly had the proper etiquette of the classroom explained to you during orientation day, so we'll jump right into some learning for today then we'll move onto physical evaluations."

Shikamaru groaned quietly next to me. "Actual class and exercise already? Troublesome."

I held in a chuckle. He really did describe everything as troublesome.

"OK, we'll start off with some chakra and jutsu theory."

My eyes lit up and my interest was suddenly peaked. This was exactly what I wanted to pay attention to. It was exactly what I needed to learn if I wanted to get stronger. This was it.

It was a step closer to my goal. To take out Obito, Kabuto, Black Zetsu, and all of those assholes.

Iruka-sensei wrote the word "Chakra" in big letters up on the board and underlined it. "Okay everyone, let's begin. First, does anyone here know what chakra is? It's OK if you don't, not many new students do, and we'll work upwards slowly."

A little part of me broke inside. _Oh. My._

Okay, so maybe I asked dad for extra lessons a little more than "Occasionally". What was I supposed to do, just sit there and learn at the pace of a snail? I was invested in learning as much as I could about ninja related topics, and I learned fast when the topic was something that I was interested in.

But _THIS?!_ Shikamaru and I learned what chakra was almost as soon as we could speak semi-coherently, which for me was very early. _Very_ early.

Rough calculations although they may have been, I figured that with where I was right now, I was fairly far ahead of my peers.

And if you factored in the fact that I would still be doing everything I could to learn outside of class too, it might take quite awhile for the academy to actually catch up to at least my theoretical knowledge.

The physical aspect wasn't all that much better. Granted, my theoretical knowledge of both chakra usage and physical fighting was leagues ahead of my actual fighting ability since it was only a few months ago that dad actually had us start with that type of thing, but I doubted that there were many who could keep up with me right now, especially the civilians who had probably barely exercised in their life.

I couldn't blame them of course, I hadn't exactly been the most active person back in the day either. But then again, I also never really had the option of becoming a ninja at a young age.

Sasuke would probably be the closest, but who knew? It was likely that some of the other clan kids such as Kiba, Choji, Ino, and Hinata would either surpass my skill level or at least match me. That probably placed me somewhere in the top five in the class. In terms of taijutsu.

My only real hope was that my level of actual chakra usage wouldn't be too far ahead, since it was what I had the least experience in. Not to mention there were plenty of other clan heirs in the room that probably were taught some form of chakra manipulation, even if it was just basic. Although my theoretical knowledge would greatly boost my progress in actual chakra usage once I was allowed to freely practice.

Freely practice meaning practice under strict supervision and authorization of course, which sucked since eventually I wanted to venture into more dangerous usages of chakra which would either take way to long to be approved officially or would be flat out refused.

Not that there was anything wrong with being ahead, and I knew that if I wanted to get strong enough to accomplish my goals I would have to stand out eventually, but I could recognize that there are certain downsides to being the number one student in everything this early on.

One of the largest problems in my mind was that I didn't ever want to be considered for early graduation. I _needed_ to be here, in this class.

Apparently no one had volunteered to answer, and apparently Iruka-sensei thought that I was the perfect scapegoat.

"Shikasara, what about you? Even just a guess is fine."

I narrowed my eyes and looked at Iruka-sensei. _What? Why me? Why, out of everyone in the class you would- Oh, thanks dad. I really would have been fine if you hadn't tipped off my teachers that I was ahead. Now I'm being used to teach everyone else._ I thought in annoyance.

I sighed and began to speak in a tired and bored tone. "Chakra is created when two other forms of energy, known as physical and spiritual energy, are molded together, both of which every person has inside of them. Physical energy is collected from the body's cells and can be increased through training and exercise. Spiritual energy is derived from the mind's consciousness and can be increased through studying, meditation, and experience." I explained lazily with a basic textbook answer.

I couldn't have just played the fool and acted like I didn't know the answer. If I did, Iruka-sensei would've questioned dad about it, which would have led to Iruka-sensei knowing that I was holding back. Not only would that kinda ruin the point of hiding my knowledge, but he might confront me about it and I wasn't really interested in doing that whole dance and song.

Not to mention I wasn't the type of person to purposefully get the wrong answer on something. If I knew something, I would answer.

"Very good Shikasara! If I didn't know any better, I would say that you already took this class!" He exclaimed, obviously over-exaggerating. It wasn't actually that impressive for a clan heir to know the textbook definition of chakra, but I knew that he just wanted to use me as an example of someone who studied.

I rolled my eyes and let out a little bit of a smile. It was rather funny to see Iruka-sensei being so dramatic.

 _Actually, how long has Iruka-sensei been a teacher? He still looks pretty young now, in his teens maybe. Weird._

•

* * *

•

"Dad, what am I gonna do?" I groaned as I lounged in a chair, tired of sitting around all day every day at the academy for the last two weeks with little to do. The sessions that I actually got the most out of were the physical training classes and the history classes, the latter simply due to the fact that it was one of the subjects specific to Konoha, and therefore I hadn't had years upon years of taking classes for it.

Dad looked up at me questioningly. "About what? There are a lot of things that you _could_ do, but don't have to."

"I already know a lot of the stuff that they're teaching that they're teaching in class since I had you tutor me so much beforehand. I need some other way to get more info so I'm not wasting my time after I finish my work." I complained.

Dad raised an eyebrow at me. "You know, normal six year old kids aren't normally concerned about wasting their time, and they especially don't want to fill that wasted time with learning more theory."

"Oh come on dad, you know I'm not normal. Besides, that doesn't answer my question. What can I do?"

He thought for a moment before responding. "Well you could always go to the Konoha ninja library."

I gave him an unimpressed look. "Dad, I'm not a ninja. I can't use that."

"Sure, but you're an academy student, so you're technically a ninja in training. You know that ID card that you got at orientation with your information on it? You can use that to get in and check things out. Although the books and scrolls available to you might be somewhat limited since as you said, you aren't actually a ninja. I don't know how much information you'll be able to get your hands on that you don't already know, but it's something." He explained to me.

My head rose up and my eyes widened. "Really?" I said hopefully. "How long is the library open?"

He looked over at a clock on the wall. "Hmm. About four more hours. Just be back before your mother does, since I can't cover for you very well."

I immediately shot to my feet and started getting my stuff together. "I'll be back soon dad, don't catch the house on fire while I'm gone. I'm off to study!" I said as I closed the door behind me.

•

* * *

•

It turned out that dad was right, the books and scrolls that I had access to were extremely limited, and I already knew a fair bit of the material or at least could understand it easily. However there were still plenty of things there that I _didn't_ know, which gave me a renewed sense of hope.

I spent the next couple of hours figuring out exactly what I needed to start with. It wasn't as if my learning had halted completely since I could still ask dad about stuff and I did still learn some things from classes, but since the academy took up a good chunk of my day, these books would be something good to have temporarily that I could use when I had nothing to do during school.

I supposed I could always ask Iruka-sensei for help as well. He was a chunin, so he had to know this kind of stuff to a certain extent right? Well, plenty more than I knew anyway. I decided that the next time I finished all of my work early in class, I would start asking him about things that I was studying.

It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. I was still only a beginner, and barely one at that. I may have known quite a bit for a student of my age, but I was years, decades even from knowing everything that I needed to know. Unfortunately I didn't have more than about one decade, so I would have to work insanely hard to get to the point I needed to be at.

Not to mention all of the other areas of training that I would need to cover as well.

Overall, this was probably going to be a very long and difficult trail. Hell, it would be near impossible. Maybe that was one of the things that made it so attractive. Either way though, I was dedicated to walk that trail, and hopefully do a bit of construction on the way.


	3. Academy Arc: Chapter 2

I was relieved to at least find out that my physical and fighting ability, although not exactly average at this stage, wasn't too far ahead of everyone else. Sasuke still beat me a little more than half the time in spars, and the only real reason that I was able to actually match him was because my purely theoretical knowledge of fighting and physics far surpassed his, while he had an advantage in the amount of training that he had done and his natural instincts were naturally better.

Surprisingly I actually had an ever so slight advantage on him in terms of muscle mass, which I attributed to the fact that while he was training to learn things like forms and katas, up until recently I had spent most of my time in physical training actually fully working out my body and exercising.

It also helped him that aside from basic forms and blows, I didn't really have any one specific style to fall back on like he did.

Sasuke of course wasn't as okay with the situation as I was. I knew that he strived to impress his father and surpass Itachi, so he was hardly fine with simply beating me or Hinata only a little bit over half the time.

Yeah, apparently comparing yourself to Itachi Uchiha wasn't the best idea in the world. What a surprise.

I was currently ranked third in taijutsu. Sasuke, obviously was in first place. Behind him was Hinata, which angered me to no end that she was beating me. Yeah, unsurprisingly I still hadn't let go of my burning hatred towards her.

Ino trailed a bit further behind me in a steady fourth place, Kiba in fifth, and Choji in sixth.

Ino's ability to rank so high could be attributed to a similar situation as me. Although she possessed less muscle mass, her theoretical knowledge and analytical ability put her ahead of most others.

Apparently Kiba wasn't too pleased by getting steadily defeated by three girls, as evidenced by the fact that you could hear him complaining about it almost daily, especially right after it actually happened.

At least it drove him to work harder, which was something. Apparently his clan had decided that he would start by focusing more on aspects such as cooperation with his ninken rather than pure taijutsu. He wasn't actually allowed to bring Akamaru to school yet since he had just gotten him weeks ago right before he entered the academy.

Although based off of my prior knowledge, I figured that a lot of his time had been spent goofing off, which probably contributed to his level of skill. Still, fifth place was respectable and there was only more room to improve.

My ability to gather, form, and control chakra did end up being the highest in the class, probably due to the fact that I had always put much more emphasis on chakra usage and theory than physical ability.

They hadn't actually started us on any actual jutsu of course, but we had been working on gathering, refining, and regulating our chakra. It wasn't likely that we would even be introduced to any sort of jutsu for at least a couple of years.

For now, it would probably be mastery of other subjects that focused on the mental aspect of our ability such as math, science, language, and basic understanding of code and encryption. As for the first three, they had to focus on it early and jump-start our ability forward to much higher levels so that we could move onto more ninja related topics in later years.

Speaking of language, it had been quite awhile since I spoke in English. Most of the time, I was also thinking in Japanese now. It had only been six years, but since I hadn't exactly had any opportunities to use English, my ability had quickly deteriorated. I didn't really know how good my English was anymore, but it probably wasn't that great.

That could also be attributed to the fact that I had worked hard to get my Japanese vocabulary and understanding ahead of what was expected at that point so that I would have an easier time understanding different books and scrolls.

In a way, my early years of language learning overwrote my previous knowledge a lot. I didn't possess the accent that I would have if I had tried to speak Japanese back in my old world. That probably had something to do with the ability of a child's brain to learn new things.

For now though, I was content to sit in school and try to soak up as much as I could. Contrary to popular belief, I couldn't really do anything about my limited access to ninja related knowledge. Not only was trying to get around the system of the largest and most powerful ninja village in the world impossible for an academy student, but it was also highly illegal.

Regardless of the fact that I was a major ninja clan heir, I wasn't actually required to become a ninja. I technically could have quit at any point I wanted to, although I never would. Because of that, things like jutsu beyond the most basic academy ones or my basic clan jutsu were off limits completely.

Even though I belonged to a clan, they couldn't just hand over ninja abilities to a civilian. That was especially true of any Konoha specific abilities that they didn't want getting out. If other ninja villages got word that a civilian with very little ninja training had knowledge like that, that civilian would be immediately targeted.

So for now I would learn what I could until more opportunity was opened up to me.

•

* * *

•

I was currently in my third year in the academy. The school work itself wasn't all that difficult, but the ever present notion of social status was. Now, I was never exactly someone who cared if I was popular or if I was alone. It was never a big deal before. However the problem was, for the last eight years, I hadn't ever really been apart from Shikamaru. We had pretty much done everything together.

So when he all of a sudden went off to do stuff with the other boys in our class like play games or of course, skip class, I was all alone.

That wasn't to say that I had nothing that I could do on my own, but it meant that I was just sitting there alone. I normally at least had Shika to talk to while I did other stuff, even while I was studying.

So in situations like right now in the so called "Kunoichi classes" where none of the boys -Shikamaru included - were there, I didn't really have anyone to talk to or sit next to.

It was a strange feeling. One that I hadn't felt in eight years, and I decided that I didn't like it at all. I had practically become dependent on Shikamaru to be next to me all the time.

Sure, I knew a few girls in our class. I knew Ino, I had talked to Sakura a few times, another Nara girl was there that I had seen at the compound a few times, there were a few civilian girls that had asked me for help in doing work a few times, and even Hinata was there.

Not to mention I didn't really relate to any of the girls in the room either. This whole class was centered around learning how to blend in as a non-ninja civilian woman, something which I had zero interest in doing. Even before I started the whole ninja life thing, I was never much into all that stuff like sewing, embroidery, flower arrangement, etc.

Of course, the ninja born females in the class weren't as involved either, but they at least had some sort of prior knowledge of this stuff. I had always just focused on my ninja studies, only ever caring how to get stronger rather than learning how to fit the stereotypical "girly" picture.

I would have gone over and talked to Ino and Sakura, but honestly I didn't really know how. I pretty much only ever talked to Ino through Shikamaru, or Choji who I talked to through Shikamaru. As for Sakura, it was even less likely since I only ever talked to her through Ino, who I talked to through Shikamaru, and I could never really talk with her much about things.

The only real similarity that we had was that we both knew all of the subject matter in classes. Even then she was always more focused on the basic studies like math, while I was absorbed almost completely in things like chakra theory, taijutsu, and tactics.

And unfortunately for me, these kunoichi classes were absolutely required for this year. Afterwards it was completely optional, and most girls who wanted to focus more on being a fully fledged kunoichi usually dropped immediately.

I was broken out of my thoughts when I felt a quick tap on my shoulder. I looked back to see Ino standing over me. "Hey Sara, what are you doing just sitting here alone? Wanna come sit with me and Sakura?"

If I was even a little bit more of an emotional person, I probably would have broken down crying from relief. Luckily I wasn't, so instead I threw myself at Ino happily. "Ino!"

My affection clearly took her by surprise, as she stood there shocked. "Uh...So I guess that's a yes? Come on, we still have an empty seat."

I nodded and followed her up to a desk at the back of the room and sat to her right, while Sakura sat to her left. Ino chuckled when I looked at her expectantly. "Sara, what's that face for?"

"Ino...I don't have any idea how to do this stuff!"

From Ino's other side, Sakura let a look of surprise come onto her face. "Shikasara, you don't know this? But you know everything! You're even ahead of me in academics."

Ino laughed at my expense. "Oh yeah Sakura, I forgot you haven't spent that much time around Sara as I have. She's great at anything ninja related, and she knows tons about theoretical stuff like math, but she's completely hopeless when it comes to anything social or stuff like this."

"What? Really?!"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I just don't get it. Ino, stop laughing! I'm just not a people person!"

Evidently, she did not do so. "Yeah, but Sakura get this. She isn't even a shy person. She has no problem with public speaking or holding a conversation. If anything, she's great at it. But one time I tried to introduce her to one of my cousins and she couldn't even get her name out."

My face grew hot and reddened. "But...Well...It isn't my fault your cousin is hot!" I blurted out carelessly.

Sakura's eyes widened. "Really? What does he look like?"

...

Ino turned to Sakura. "She."

"What?"

"She."

"Huh?"

"My cousin is a girl Sakura."

...

"Oh."

OK yeah, so I was bisexual. So what?

"Y-Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?"

Sakura waved her hands frantically around. "What? No! No, of course not. I just didn't expect it is all. I just never thought about it much."

I let out a sigh of relief. I was worried for a second. In the ninja community, no one really cared who you were interested in as long as it was legal by age. The civilians were...less accepting. They were currently going through a whole legal battle thing about if it was even alright.

"O-Okay, that's good. As long as you don't have a problem with it, we're fine."

"I don't! My mom is one of the people on the civilian advisory council that's fighting for the civilian laws to get passed."

That was something I didn't know. "Oh. Really?"

"Yeah! You like what you like, right?"

I blinked and turned to Ino. "Yeah, she gets it." I turned back to Sakura. "You know Sakura, I think that we'll be good friends."

"Really?"

Ino wrapped her arm around the back of my neck. "Aww, I'm so proud of you Sara. Here I was talking about how bad you were at making friends and you totally blew me out of the water!"

I ended up not really having many problems after that. Most of the time I just wandered over to Ino and/or Sakura, and sometimes I was the one to leave Shikamaru. I was starting to get the hang of that friend thing.

•

* * *

•

Iruka-sensei stepped up to the front of the class and coughed to get our attention. Our class had been drastically cut down to about half of its original size, most of the children who left being civilian born. All of the main clan children had stayed though, so my plans weren't thrown off.

"Okay everyone, welcome back to your fourth year in the academy. Aside from your final year, this is your most important year of school. If you don't already know, I'll explain. Every one of you here is either nine years old or about to be, and you have roughly four years of instruction until graduation." He explained quickly.

"Due to this, we will begin to actually teach you more complex use of chakra, the three basic academy jutsu, and we will focus much more on your physical abilities than your simple and basic classes like Math, Science, and Language."

There were many oohs and aahs around the room, and even a few shouts of excitement. There was also one yip from Akamaru.

"However, we can't very well just teach you these things without any regulation. This year marks the point of no return. You've now all dedicated yourself to the life of a ninja, and after this point none of you will be able to turn back. No matter what happens, you will be kept in the ninja program permanently unless you suffer from an injury which prevents you from doing so. If any of you wish to opt out, please come grab a paper from the front, fill it out, and bring it to the front desk."

Of course, no one in the room did. There were a few that twitched in doubt, but none moved from their seats.

I had known that this was coming. Shikamaru and I had been told about it early on when we decided to start in the academy. The other clan kids had probably been told as well, but I couldn't be completely sure.

After a couple of minutes of letting everyone mull it over, Iruka-sensei stood once again and addressed us.

"Very well. Then as of today, I welcome all of you to the ninja program of Konoha. For the next four years, you will be instructed in the shinobi arts. This will be much more rigorous than what you have experienced in your past three years of school. You will be here for three more hours every day than before, there will be bi-monthly examinations and trials to evaluate your class rank in each category and what we need to do to whip you into a proper shinobi. Am I understood?"

a collective gulp went across the room. "Yes sensei!"

Iruka-sensei smiled a little bit and relaxed. "Good, then let's get started. To start, I'd like to introduce you all to someone who you will become very well acquainted with over the course of the next few years. Mizuki, if you'd please come in."

The door to the class room slid open, and in walked a chunin with bluish white hair with a bandanna style headband.

I glared at him from my seat as he walked to the front of the classroom. _Oh hey, it's one of the bastards on my list. Not super high up, but high enough._

He stepped to the front of the room and bowed to the class. "It's very nice to meet you all. I'm Mizuki Touji, you can call me Mizuki-sensei. I will be with you for the next few years to assist you in anything that you may need help with."

A few people around the room greeted back. I opted to sit silently and glare, something which apparently didn't escape Shikamaru's notice, as I saw him give me an odd look from my right.

I averted my gaze and tried to just look at Iruka-sensei. It wouldn't do any good for people to start getting suspicious of me right now. I couldn't afford to do that until I actually became a ninja, at least genin.

I knew that there were certain things that I couldn't tamper with. One of those things was Mizuki's betrayal. I knew that without the clone jutsu, Iruka-sensei would fail Naruto. If I were to raise suspicions about Mizuki and he got investigated, he would probably end up gone. That would mean that no one would be there to trick Naruto, and Iruka-sensei wouldn't end up passing Naruto.

I still had to let Naruto and Iruka-sensei's relationship grow more, and that night was essential to it. If that night didn't happen, Naruto wouldn't find out about Kurama either.

I wasn't an expert on tailed beasts and their seals, but I didn't want to take the chance that him not being concious of the fact that Kurama was sealed inside of him would make it so that he wouldn't use the tailed beast chakra in wave. That could have consequenses that I didn't really want to consider. Sasuke wasn't exactly a friend, but I knew how crucial he was in the grand scheme of things.

If I wanted to have any level of control over how things went, I had to hold myself back sometimes in order to keep things the same. That didn't mean that I was going to let everything happen the same of course, that would go against the whole reason that I was doing any of this.

It wasn't like I was going to let Sasuke still get captured or anything like that, but if I interfered too much, I would end up with absolutely no prior knowledge of events. I really didn't like to wing stuff, so keeping things as similar as possible was my best bet, at least at the start.

I could afford to change things once I had the strength and resources to actually deal with unforeseen situations, but I wasn't at that level yet.

I wasn't anywhere near that level, and I wouldn't be for years to come. So instead, I had to use any knowledge that I had to my advantage if I didn't want to mess anything up and get myself killed. Or other people.

Iruka clapped to get our attention again and grabbed a piece of chalk. "Alright everyone, we're going to jump right into jutsu today. You've all spent the last three years working on proper gathering, refining, and regulating your chakra, so you should be ready to start working on the most basic of the academy three, the transformation jutsu."

He took the chalk and used it to write "transformation" in large letters on the board. "Before we move onto exactly how to use the transformation jutsu, I want to stress the importance of knowing it well throughout your ninja career. It is an extremely versatile jutsu, applicable in the case of intelligence gathering, needing a diversion, blending into a crowd, or even battle. And with enough experience, you can also transform into something other than a person, such as an animal, a plant, or even an inanimate object like a weapon."

Multiple different people took out notebooks and started taking detailed notes, including myself. I more or less knew this already because of my previous experience with the series, but it was always good to record info for the future to look over.

"When I say that the transformation is the most basic of the academy three, I mean that in terms of concept, it is the simplest. However it is arguably the most difficult of the three to execute consistently. The transformation technique is considered to be among the more difficult E-ranked techniques, since it requires constant emission of chakra while mentally maintaining the form. In addition, the user will most likely be using it while interacting with the environment around them. This puts mental strain on an inexperienced ninja. Any questions?"

After a few moments of students jotting down notes and no one raising their hands, he continued.

"Now, as I stated before this jutsu requires a constant emission of chakra and a steady mental image. To be honest, the chakra is secondary here. Unless you have drastically low levels of chakra or naturally below average reserves, the chakra drain isn't very noticeable once you get some experience with it. The important part is to maintain a strong mental image of your transformed state. The three hand signs used for this jutsu are dog, boar, and ram."

For the next hour or so, Iruka-sensei had us practice the hand signs for the transformation jutsu to make sure we had it down and we could do it at an acceptable pace. Well, acceptable for academy students who had just started practicing anyway.

After that, he had us all try to use the actual jutsu. For the most part when people tried, nothing happened, a puff of smoke was created, or a slight shimmer appeared before the illusion broke. Sasuke, Hinata, Ino, and I did the best out of the whole group.

Sasuke was a given since he had already learned the great fireball jutsu, so he naturally had pretty decent control over his chakra. His appeared as a light coat of sorts, which didn't actually help any. Instead it just made it look like a ghost of the transformed figure was standing in the same place as him.

Hinata was also somewhat of a guarantee, since she had recently begun her training for how to apply chakra bursts from her palms and fingertips so that she could properly use the gentle fist. Hers was similar to Sasuke, if maybe a bit weaker and empty in some parts. Neither of them really had very good detail.

As for Ino, it was a pleasant surprise. She had begun to train with her father in how to use their family jutsu about a year ago, which required a decent amount of chakra control and regulation since they were quite literally projecting their mind into something or someone else.

She had the best transformation out of everybody. Hers manifested as a form that seemed to be much more solid, although it was missing a lot of small details that made it fairly obvious that it was a transformation. For example, the hair was more or less all combined as one huge thing rather than individual strands.

As for me, I trailed behind Ino somewhat but I was ahead of Sasuke. Mine didn't look quite solid, but it was so enough that my smaller form was only a little bit noticeable. I was missing even more fine detail than Ino.

Of course, that was just how the teachers ranked it. I on the other hand was looking for something else, in a specific person. Naruto.

Iruka-sensei had told us to try to transform into something simple and tell them. Naruto had said he was going to transform into a taller and older version of himself, with a green chunin jacket. When he attempted the jutsu, there was a large poof of smoke that engulfed him. When it dissipated, nothing had changed.

Or at least that was what everyone thought. I however had been looking for something specific.

When he came out of the smoke, I noticed that his clothes looked a size or two bigger, and his jacket had a more tan-like color to it, which is what you get when you mix orange and dark green. The thing was, it wasn't just an illusion.

His shadow had actually gotten bigger, which meant that either he did or his clothes did. And the jacket didn't lose any of its detail, instead just changing color and getting a bit bigger.

Naruto Uzumaki could naturally create solid transformations, even without any practice whatsoever. I remembered that it had been a widely accepted theory in the fanfiction community back in my old world.

The problem was, I didn't know _why_. My knowledge in the subject wasn't exactly what anyone would call advanced. Hell, I was barely a beginner. But I knew that what Naruto was doing shouldn't have been possible.

He wasn't making anything grow. He wasn't adding on more material through some complicated deception. He was creating and altering _matter_. And not just one type of matter either. He was perfectly replicating the matter that he was enhancing and forming it into something technically new.

So what was it? He was only using chakra, that much I knew. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it through pure chakra. I had one theory. A theory that would give reason to a lot of other things I knew that Naruto would be able to do one day.

Was he creating a shadow clone? I never actually knew how shadow clones were made, it was never explained. All I knew was that the user used a massive amount of chakra, and split that chakra between each clone evenly.

But it was impossible that it was a regular shadow clone. It didn't have the same hand signs as the transformation, and the chakra flow and release was probably completely different.

The hand signs were the most flexible part. They were used to direct the chakra, effectively telling the body where to put that chakra and what to do with it. The hand signs could still be the same and it would work, but he would still have to utilize and form his chakra exactly how the shadow clone jutsu did.

There was only one explanation. Only one possibility. But it wasn't probable by any means.

 _Was he just doing the transformation jutsu wrong? Did he actually misunderstand its execution to the point where he accidentally replicated the utilization of chakra used in the shadow clone jutsu? That would justify it._

 _It would be like he was creating a physical shadow clone within himself and combining with it as a sort of partner, using it as a catalyst for a new form. That would explain why he didn't notice. Rather than creating something over himself like a suit of armor, even a physical one, he was creating a separate physical entity within himself and fusing with it._

 _That's the combination transformation technique. It allows the user to combine with another person or intelligent being to create a different, solid form. It requires two separate and completely willing people, and if they want the transformation to last and withstand heavy blows, they have to be completely in sync. That's a B-rank technique!_

 _Was he seriously subconsciously using an altered version of a high B-rank jutsu with a massive chakra drain internally along with another B-rank jutsu to form something completely new? He was instantaneously achieving a fused state with an exact copy of himself._

The combination transformation technique took two people, sometimes with one providing the hand seals and the other providing the chakra. Naruto was doing both, and he had monstrous amounts of chakra to spare.

 _If Naruto were to form the hand seals for a transformation jutsu and internally form his chakra for a shadow clone, giving nearly all of his chakra to the clone, he could potentially transform into something huge. Maybe not the size of a giant fox like he does against Gaara just yet since his chakra reserves are still developing and increasing, but it could still be huge. Once he masters his form of the transformation jutsu like he does in the series, he could be an absolute monster._

If that wasn't impressive enough, something else hit me.

 _Is….Is that how a willing tailed beast transformation works? Is Naruto naturally predisposed to an internal combination transformation and physical change in form? Is he used to it because of his natural link with Kurama? If he continues to practice this type of transformation until he absolutely masters it…That's why he could do the shadow clone jutsu so easily! Because he had already mastered an internal version of it, all he needed to do was externalize the process with the use of different hand seals!_

It was a goldmine. Naruto was a ball of natural instincts and he didn't even know it. _If he used this knowingly, he could create a giant physical form. Sure, it wouldn't be anywhere near the level of destruction that an actual tailed beast transformation would bring, but the intimidation factor alone and the idea that Konoha's Jinchuuriki could fully utilize their tailed beast – the nine-tails no less – would be enough to scare away almost any enemy! And the pure potential of destruction was nothing to sneeze at either._

For now, I would wait patiently. Wait as this powerhouse grew on his own right in front of my eyes, then once he mastered it, I knew what I had to do. I knew exactly what one of the first things I was going to help Naruto with was, right behind efficiently and effectively using his shadow clones.

This opened up so much opportunity for techniques. If Naruto could do this, what else could he do? And I had four years to plan, calculate, study, and train.

I changed my mind, the academy was going to be very fun.


End file.
